Recommendations and MS Paint

TV

The new BBC America and Netflix adaptation of Douglas Adams’ Dirk Gently books became available on UK Netflix this week. The books follow the surreal adventures of Dirk, a private detective who believes in the interconnectedness of all things. In Dirk’s world, murder cases aren’t solved by deduction, they’re solved by finding lost cats and discovering the secret behind eccentric professors’ magic tricks.

I think you would like the sci-fi TV drama Orphan Black. It’s made by BBC America in Canada and was originally aired on BBC Three in the UK, distribution has since been taken over by Netflix, where the fourth series has just concluded. I only realised after 8 episodes had already been released, so had the luxury of binging on the majority of the fourth series in a matter of days. Can Netflix do no wrong? (Apart from the Adam Sandler thing, but let’s pretend that didn’t happen.)

I recommend the sitcom Arrested Development. And that’s a pretty big deal, because it’s an American sitcom, and I’ve long held the short sighted view that American sitcoms aren’t worth bothering with because they’re inferior and boring and full of irritatingly perky, unnecessarily attractive, lightning-toothed gimps, served with a side dish of canned laughter. Arrested Development is not inferior and boring and full of irritatingly perky, unnecessarily attractive, lightning-toothed gimps, served with a side dish of canned laughter. It’s really very good actually.

I’ve only seen the first two episodes of The A Word at the time of writing, but I’m not going to let that hold me back. It’s a six-part BBC drama series about a family wrestling with the A word in question: autism.

I recommend the BBC sitcom Detectorists. It was written and directed by Mackenzie Crook
and stars Crook and Toby Jones as Andy and Lance, a hapless pair of metal detecting enthusiasts in the fictional town of Danebury.

I recommend the sitcom Spaced, and it’s not the first time I’ve recommended it. When deciding to draw a silly picture and write some silly words about Spaced, I remembered that I wrote about it on of my many ill-fated old blogs. So I found it. That blog, which was active for a few months about five years ago, has now had many thousands of views.

I recommend the Channel 4 sitcom Catastrophe to James. Well, I was going to recommend it to James, but he’s already seen it. Perhaps I’ll recommend that he continues watching it, as it would be a shame for him to miss the last episode of the series, which is airing next Wednesday. I also recommend that he doesn’t try and look up what time it’s on, because the Channel 4 episode guide tells you what happens in it, for fuck’s sake.